You're the worst

I woke up around 3AM on Tuesday morning and, for some reason, started watching a show I’d never watched before called “You’re the Worst”. I instantly liked the characters, laughed at the jokes, and even enjoyed the mostly B-story plot. So, I did what any good American would do: I binge watched both seasons in 2 days.  What would any good American do next? They would go to work and tell a captive audience (co-workers) all about the awesome show they just binge watched. This was my plan but as I drove to work, mentally preparing to pounce on the conversationally slow and weak I had a revelation.

There are at least 7 primary characters in this show and another 4 or 5 ancillary characters that are introduced when needed to further the plot. Out of this dozen+ characters, I couldn’t name any of them. I’d just spent 8.5 hours watching them talk to each other and call each other by name over and over and none of the names had stuck in my mind.

Names:

I’ve always had this problem. If you introduce yourself to me I will not remember your name. I will call you buddy, guy, pal, partner, chief, scout, trooper, champ, killer, kimo sabi, dude, bro, tiger, partner, sir, ma'am, friend, or anything else required to NOT have to ask you your name again because I know it will upset you to realize I couldn’t be bothered to learn it. I will, literally, do this for years. I have known entire families for 30+ years and still don’t know which name goes with which person. It simply does not register with me. Even if I have worked closely with you and called you by your name repeatedly, it was simply a series of sounds from a pool of noises I now associate with you. I was sorting though similar sounds in my head every time I talked to you and, basically, picked your name out of a hat. Names mean nothing to me.

Let me take that a step further. I refuse to name animals. They don’t name us. I was mortified when I went to the vet’s office with a puppy and they wanted to know her name. I had to pick something and when I got the bill, the f^%king dog had my last name. She’s not related to my grandfather and she didn’t marry into the family. Why the f^%k does she have my last name? I raise snakes and when I took a few of them to the vet for tests they had names like “var-king-f-03-02” denoting that she was the second female variable kingsnake born in 2003. A name that means something! Naming animals is for the commie hippies who animated bambi and 7 year old girls who think their stuffed animals can talk to them (I may have gone too far there for some of you but it leads into my next point.)

Identity:

Animals know us by our perceptible physical identities. They recognize the way we move, our size, our smell, and our sounds. In fact, if you’ve ever been a serious hunter, then you probably know that animals require multiple sensory inputs to “know” things. They can react to a single sense like a noise but they rarely act until they have another sense to verify what they think they know. So, a sweet little deer is grazing on honey suckle at the edge of a clearing in the woods when it hears the snap of a twig. It could be a hunter! The deer might bolt instantly but 9 out of 10 times it freezes. This is the natural reaction. Stop and verify. It needs something else to cause instinctual action. It raises its head and looks around. Is there motion through the trees, is there a strange scent in the air? If yes, it runs. If no, it waits for a second input. These are simple machines designed to survive in a world that wants to eat them. This is how Identity works in nature. In the case of the deer example the identity is “danger”. In the case of your domestic pets, identity is movement, behavior, and scent. I remember cutting off my long hair and shaving my full beard and then looking over to see my dog staring at me as if to say “who the f^%k are you?” She hesitated to let me pet her. My voice, movement and scent confirmed that although she wasn't familiar with what she was seeing I could be trusted and she accepted me once again, but it took a minute. This is how I see people also. You are the sounds, movement and stink that surround you (in this sentence "stink" is mostly hyperbole; I don’t have a very good sense of smell). Not to put too fine a point on it but unless a person has unique facial features I often confuse them with other people. I see basically a dozen or so combinations of noses, eyes, cheek bones, etc. Seriously, the phrase “they all look the same to me” applies to almost all the people I know. I am one of those people who still can't tell that Padme is Queen Amidala when I re-watch Phantom Menace.

Focus:

Finally there’s the problem of focus. I am a terrible guy to play pool with. I’m sorry. I meant to say “With which to play pool.” There’s no excuse for bad grammar. Oh! Focus, Norris you are talking about focus. I have terrible focus and I always have. I work very hard to stay focused when I work on important tasks. Things that require coordination and correct form like my previous example of playing pool are incredibly hard for me. I am terribly inconsistent and I have terrible focus. It's why I can watch 8 ½ hours of TV and not remember any of the characters names. I simply don’t see the names in my head unless I stop and force myself to create a mental picture. It's part of my problem with touch-typing, I do not see letters in my head when I think of words, so rather than picking the letters from the keyboard I have this delay before I see them on the screen. How did I get on typing? Oh yeah. My focus issues.

Speaking of names, I’ve been called a lot of names in my life, most of them because of the fact that I'm not usually on the same page as everyone else. This makes it hard to relate and often makes it seem like I'm not paying attention. Like not knowing your name after spending all weekend at a conference with you. I know this is a problem and I have yet to be able to correct it despite trying. I drove to work the other day with a story in my mind, characters and plot arcs firmly anchored but I had no idea that the characters had personal identity outside the actions that made them individuals. It’s possible that you need a certain degree of focus to associate sounds with actions. Maybe you need a conscious way to process these noises into short term memory and let the brain file things away later. I don't know. Whatever it is, I have trouble with it and it's only gotten marginally better as I've matured. I'll keep working on it.

I feel like I started off strong and ended up weak.  Oh well. There’s always next post. In the mean time, please enjoy this Mark Ronson video.

This week in ketosis 022116.

Wow. I messed around all last week and didn’t post at all. What am I thinking going to work and taking care of my responsibilities and not typing out pointless, confusing posts about things I heard other people discussing in podcasts? Well, there’s not much to report on the ketosis front either I guess. I am down to 196#, I’m taking exogenous ketones in the morning, and checking my blood ketone level every other day. I made chili on Saturday. That’s not really interesting unless you like chili. It’s not like I used some special low carb/high fat recipe. It’s chili. Unless you’re some bean-adding-yankee there are almost no carbs in chili. The beef I used is high is saturated fats (I added a little spicy sausage to it as well but just because I had some) which is what I am looking for.

This may be the most boring post ever.

Think, Norris. What do you do to fill in space when you have no interesting content?

I know! Colorful and distracting graphs!

Quick note: For those who do not know I'm following the basic calculations from ketogenic-diet-resouce.com  It breaks down like this: 1 gram protein per Kg desired body weight, 10% carbs/20% protein/70% fat.

This first chart plots my caloric intake for the last month. I put the carb/protein/fat on here for reference but keep in mind they are not the same units. I am looking for a correlation between at peaks and valleys. I notice that my calorie trend line is going up and the days my calories are highest are also the days my fat intake is the highest. My caloric intake tends to be higher on the weekends when I get to ride my bicycle and work out. A noticeable exception is the 11th when the boss brought us fresh ground hamburger patties and I ate (4). Over all I take the trend line as a sign that I've finally figured out how to get calories from healthy fat sources like coconut oil and whipping cream.

This next one shows my carb intake. The spike on the 5th was homemade tamales, on the 7th it was french fries at the movies, and the 21rst was me eating saltines with my chili. Despite that my carbs are trending almost flat at the calculated level.

My protein is trending down but I don't mind because I've been exceeding the calculated levels over and over. I may finally be getting a handle on that as well.

See? My fat intake is trending up. I felt a natural apprehension about this but I am still losing weight and I am able to ride my bicycle for hours and exercise with no fatigue or weakness. In fact, I feel stronger than ever most days.

And finally my ketone levels. I check my blood glucose levels the first thing in the morning before breakfast every other day, this may not be representative of my level fluctuations throughout the day but it should give me consistent data points to compare. sadly, I only have ~2 weeks worth of data so I'll update this tomorrow when I do my next reading. The trend line should be ignored until I get more readings.

So, there you go. I've gotten a lot of flak from people about making a spreadsheet to chart my ketosis but I love it. I wish I had started this when I cut all the sugar last August. I'd love to have 6 months of data to plot now. I feel like this pure ketogenic diet is not quite for me. I want my fruits back and I'd love to dump my meat on a bed of rice or pasta again. I'll keep monitoring things and in a couple months I'll modify my diet again until I find something that makes me happy and healthy.

This week in ketosis 021416

Before I start, I went to see Deadpool today. Whether you are or were a comic book fan this movie kicked ass. They did a great job with the snarky, cynical, raunchy humor and they weren’t afraid of the 4th wall at all. Great job to everyone involved in making it and to everyone else, give this film your money! That being said, don’t take the kids. There’s a strip club scene that’s quite 1980’s T&A. After the movie, as I was leaving the theater, there was a family ahead of me with a young girl probably 10 or 12 tears old who was telling her mom that the stripper scene was no big deal because “the internet has destroyed my brain already” This was a reply to her mom asking her why she didn’t turn her head when it came on

I could make the argument that the internet hasn’t “destroyed her brain” but forced it to deal. I could explain to her mother (who is about my age) that when her grandparents were this girl's age and a family member died, they laid the dead person out on the kitchen table in their house for all the family, friends, and neighbors to come see. Has your daughter ever seen a dead person IRL? Answer: No. But there were dozens of corpses in this movie and you didn’t expect her to turn her head for those. Likewise, nudity just a couple generations ago was treated very differently depending on the cause or conditions. I won’t spend too much time on this since it offends many more sensitive sensibilities, but let’s just agree that the issue wasn’t naked women it was WHY they were naked. There’s a difference between a great depression era family having to make the hot water last on bathing day and 20-nothing females with fake tits working in a strip club for tips and (quite often) drugs. As a father of a girl I would chalk this up to “we need to have a talk about the reality of the world around you” Hopefully that’s what happened and hopefully, next time, this mother will read a freaking review before she takes her pubescent kid to a movie with dozens of f-bomb’s in it. {He said as if he doesn’t drop the F-bomb in public in front of other people’s kids all the f&^king time}

Now back to our show:

Ketosis is going well. I got a blood monitor and despite a carb-loading last Sunday I am doing well. I was .3mmol on Wednesday and .6mmol on Friday (that’s measured before the evening meal at least 3 hours since eating or exercising). I know that’s not uber-high but it’s high enough to work and I am establishing a real base line.

I have been drinking water based on thirst. I was thirsty as Hell in the middle of the week and wouldn’t you know it my weight went up a little over a pound after that.

I am in love with cooking with coconut oil. I won’t waste time with links but coconut oil is so completely saturated that you can crank up the heat and cook anything you want without breaking it down into oxidized oils. I’m rubbing it on fish and meat and using it to sauté my veggies. I was raised with olive oil and love to cook with it, but I often over heat it. Now I mostly just dump it on salads and wraps (I use lavash bread for wraps which I also love).

I ate the hell out of buttered veggies this week (broccoli and asparagus). I love that too.

Can you feel the love? Then don't read my previous post.

Did I mention I haven’t smoked in 3 weeks? Did I mention I smoke? Well, I smoke cigars. Who can blame me? I was born to smokers in the hay-day of smoking. I can guarantee you my father was smoking the first time he held me. My mother smoked while breast feeding. They smoked when we went to the grocery store, school plays, grandma’s house, before meals, during meals, and after meals. Everyone smoked all the time. My friends in high school all smoked (half of them smoked in middle school). I refused to smoke because I’m a contrarian. But once I was free of all those people I messed around and developed a love of wonderful, sweet, strong, hand rolled, maduro cigars. mmMMMmmm So, yes ladies, I drink bourbon, smoke cigars, drive a 4-wheel-drive pick-up truck and shoot guns because I am a manly Texas man and there’s no one in my life to tell me not to! That being said, last year I had some dental work done and cigars aggravated my gums so I cut back to only smoking once or twice a week. It made a big difference. This month I cut back to no cigars per week. When I want one, I’ll smoke one, but my daily smoking days are behind me. Just like if I want pasta or rice, I’ll eat pasta or rice but eating it every night is behind me.

I am building a new routine and it feels good. It’s got my attention and it motivates me.

just FYI: my latest ketone blood test is 1.2

Third times a charm.

In honor of St Valentine’s day (another recently made-up overtly-capitalist holiday that Pakistan has some problem with ) I’ve been debating posting about my relationship status (chronically single) and my problems with meeting people and forging long term relationships but everything I write just comes out sad and inherently negative. No one wants to read that and I don’t want to write it.

So instead let’s talk about something, for which, I am very positive.

Crap.

While I was trying to think of something I read this.

It’s a very well written and entertaining article. I think her points about choices are very good, but as I read it and tried to imagine the scenarios this woman was writing about I realized this wasn’t written for me. Imagining these scenarios is all I can do; I don’t live in any of them. Recently the topic of relationships and marriage has come up in lots of podcasts and articles to which I am typically exposed (I am assuming this is not result of my selective bias but because of the holiday). The conversations always sound like this lady’s article.

She writes, “The explosion of choices now available has impacted our desires and expectations, and led us to reconsider traditional decisions.”

I do not feel like I have an explosion of choices. Which makes me think, maybe I do and I’m just not exploiting them. Then why do I feel like I have no choices? Let’s do some quick math.

Here’s the numbers. I live in county A and work in county B, these two counties have a combined population of ~80,000 people. 10% of those people are within 5 years +/- of my age. Half of those are women. That’s 400.  60% of those are married. That leaves 180. Now things get tricky. Let’ say half of them are currently in a relationship (which is a very low estimate as most people around here tend to ALWAYS be in a relationship, needy f&^ckers) and half of the remainder actively practice a religious philosophy in which I can’t take participate (I already tried that it ends with me paying two lawyers). Now that leaves 45 potential women but here come the two things that are going to hurt some feelings. Only a quarter of them have any school beyond high school and a third of them are obese. Rounding down that means there could potentially be 7 single women within a 30 mile radius of here that MIGHT be compatible. 

This brings up the topic that makes me angry at the optimistic pod-casters and blog writers. The idea of “date lots of people” is a real issue for me. I am admitting it’s my issue and it’s not impossible and I shouldn’t let it stop me if I really wanted to meet someone but it HAS stopped me for years. I have some real problems when it comes to relating to people and meeting new people is something I simply cannot do without an introduction. But introductions are no longer made, we live in the age of ask out anyone you like at any time (in the past you could get shot for that). So, besides the fact that there’s a low population from which to chose, and a low variation of types of people to date I’ve got some sort of pseudo-developmental-Asperger’s thing that has always hampered me. To that, the optimistic pod-caster would say “just go do it, it’ll get easier, you learn how to deal with blah, blah, blah.” I don’t believe that’s true, but if I follow that advice anyway and get optimistic and go out to meet someone, where do I go?

Why don’t I go to town and meet someone? There are a couple mid sized cities within 30-45 minutes drive of my house. Well, this one is not my fault. The social activities where I live are geared towards married couples, kids in school, old people, and church groups. That just leaves going to friends' parties and bars. I only have a few friends and they don’t have any friends so they don’t throw any parties and I’ve been to the bars, I grew up in bars; I’m not going back. If you are starting to get frustrated with my attitude please remember that walking up to a woman and saying “hello my name is…” stops being cute sometime in your early thirties unless you're Ryan Reynolds. I’m 42 and it’s just creepy if I’m in a public place and I walk up to some women I don't know. I'm trying to guess if she's single and she's trying to guess if I'm a rapist. Oh! That leads to the point: She wouldn’t think I was a creeper if she was attracted to me, right?

I know what you’re thinking, Norris, why don’t you just give match.com your money and let them help you meet someone. Let MATH DECIDE! You already admitted that you probably won’t find anyone nearby, you don’t like the idea of approaching strangers who probably aren’t single anyway and no one you know is in any hurry to make an introduction, so let the internet do its thing. That’s a good choice and an article about choice is what started this train of thought.

OK, if I play the internet game I have the potential opportunity to “date lots of people” and “find someone that you like”

So, why don’t I? Well, I basically wrote this post 3 times trying to be honest but not melodramatic and I don't think I've succeeded. There's no defense for my behavior other than me giving in to my dysfunction and refusing to improve on it so.....

In a nut shell, I don’t because I have never experienced anything in any past relationship that was worth the inevitable suffering required to experience it again. People keep saying it’s worth it. You keep telling me that we love, we lose; we try again. Eventually we meet the right person at the right time and after a lot of work and dedication we have a life that deeply involves someone else and it’s all worth it.

To that I have to say, I think you’re stupid.

And deep down I want to be stupid, too.

Happy Valentines day

Jocko's watch and Twitters sense of timing

 I’m not a big social media fan but I do enjoy twitter (which is funny considering how wordy I am, no 140 character crap here).  I rarely care where someone is (I’m miles from any of them) or what they are doing (I’m busy with my own stuff), but I like links to cool things I never would have found on my own (Many days, it’s the only place to get news that doesn’t make me want to dig a bunker and start stockpiling food). I can keep up with my favorite youtubers and podcasters and every now and then I see something funny or inspiring.

One such inspirational person is Jocko Willink. He’s a decorated, former Navy Seal commander, Jiu Jitsu practitioner, author, podcaster, leadership consultant, and all around bad ass. But what impresses me is that he gets up almost every morning @4:30AM (PST) posts a pic of his watch and works out.

I get up @ 5:30AM CST and by the time I get to check my phone and see what’s up in the world he’s the only person posting anything. I like to get up early and get things done. I’m not working out, I’m doing chores and prepping for the work day but it is accomplishment and that is, possibly, my favorite thing in life. Pick a task, work on that task, and accomplish that task. I love the feeling of finishing something. Success is a great teacher who will let you fail over and over and still teach you something when you get it right. I HATE the part of my day where I’m trying to get things done and the world around me is trying to derail, delay and, if possible, stop me.  So, I like to get up early and get after it while there’s no one to distract me or add their problems to my pile.

 Jocko’s watch tells me that I am not alone in this. It’s a small thing but it motivates me.

 Now for the rub: Twitter has launched their algorithm based timeline crap with some new features designed to see if I want them to decide what I look at on twitter. The very first thing it did was throw up a pic of Jocko’s watch from yesterday 4 hours after his watch from today. I turned that crap off. I look forward to rolling out of bed tomorrow morning because by the time I’m ready to storm out the door to face whatever I have to do I’ll be able to see that Jocko’s up and facing whatever he has to do.

why Health Care Reform was and is a joke.

Let me sum it up. They kept saying "health care reform" except it didn't make a f&^cking change to health care it's about health insurance and the word "reform" is a misnomer. Health care in the modern world is the finest it has ever been with more opportunities and tools to save lives than has ever existed ever. This is the golden age of medicine until the next one emerges; stop talking shit.

The reality is if I go buy a new truck they are required, by law, to show me an itemized list of every fee, tax, and charge that will be passed on to me, but if I got to the hospital for a persistent, low grade fever they have no legal or ethical reason to explain who will bill me for what or when nor do they have a standard set of rules for explaining to me what the hell is going on with me or what I can do other than taking my prescribed meds. The science is phenomenal the execution is barbaric.

For example, my last stitches cost me over $1,000 and I always take out my own stitches because I am he-beast raised to accept pain (and sympathy)

$1,000 is a small price to pay for piece of mind tho, right? It took them over 6 months to send me all my bills for those 4 stitches. Think about that.

Now, fast forward to my recent Christmas catscan following the head banging event on my bicycle and you won't be surprised to find out that I just received a notification that I must go to www.troversolutions.com to fill out some sort of form. It turns out they are company whose job it is to find out if they can sue someone on behalf of bluecross/blueshield so they don't have to pay the half of my insurance bills they were otherwise forced to pay.

I'll just let that sink in while I load up the screen shots of the questions they asked me.

"Has the patient received any treatment before or after the initial screen for an auto accident, a work related injury or illness, or any other injury that occurred on public or private property?"

Read that back to me just so I know I'm not off my rocker.

Yeah. That's what I thought.  They asked have I ever been hurt ever before. No, bitch. I'm the freaking Buddha and I've never known suffering until I read your website. Now I'll sit under this tree for 49 days until I achieve enlightenment and ascend to Nirvana.

Note to self: Do a post about bureaucracy.